9. And as an abiding thoughtfulness for the first and indispensable formation of the spirit and virtues of the priesthood should inspire the masters of your junior seminaries in their relations with their pupils, so, too, the system of study and the whole economy of discipline must be allied to this same primary and directing idea. We are not unaware, Venerable Brothers, that you are to a certain extent obliged to reckon with the State programme and with the conditions imposed by it for obtaining university degrees, owing to the fact that in certain cases such degrees are required of priests engaged in the management of free colleges under the patronage of the Bishops and religious congregations, or in the higher teaching of Catholic faculties which you have so laudably established. It is, moreover, of sovereign importance for the maintenance of the influence of the clergy on society that they count among their ranks a sufficient number of priests yielding nothing in science, of which degrees are the official evidence, to the masters whom the State trains for its lyceums and universities.